About this work
is an 1876 oil on canvas portrait that announces itself quietly — no theatrical gesture, no formal pose. Mallarmé is depicted leaning back against white cushions of a couch, holding a cigar, appearing to be in deep contemplation.
He sits before light beige wallpaper decorated with what critics believe to be butterflies and flowers — motifs some scholars read as Japanese in character, consistent with the Japonisme influences that surface elsewhere in Manet's work.
Mallarmé's arm rests on a bundle of paper.
Art historian Anne Coffin Hanson has suggested that Manet deliberately contrasted the smoke rising from Mallarmé's cigar with the delicate Japanese designs on the wallpaper, arguing this contrast generates an atmosphere that blends sensuality and reflectivity. The palette is warm and close — browns, creams, and the soft grey of smoke — and Manet's brushwork has an ease that mirrors the sitter's own. He applied the paint with a "virtuoso freeness," and Mallarmé's relaxed, seated position makes the portrait feel spontaneous, informal, and pointedly modern.
The portrait was painted in 1876, the year of the publication of Mallarmé's *Après-midi d'un faune*, a long poem illustrated by engravings by Manet.
Their friendship went back to 1873, and for almost ten years the two men met every day to discuss painting, literature, and the new aesthetic. As he had done with Zola in 1866, Manet undertook this portrait partly to thank Mallarmé for a published article in his defense.
Mallarmé had written an essay entitled "The Impressionists and Edouard Manet" for a London magazine that same year — an essay art historian Carol Armstrong credits with sealing "Manet's reputation as the founder of Impressionism." The painting is thus a mutual act of recognition between two men who were reshaping French culture simultaneously. Georges Bataille remarked that the portrait "radiates the friendship of two great minds."
Contemporaries considered it the "best likeness" of Mallarmé among the many portrait paintings and engravings made of the poet — high praise in an era when his image was much sought after. The painting was acquired from Mallarmé's family by the Louvre in 1928 and later transferred to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where it now resides.
At just 27.5 × 36 cm, this is a small canvas — and that intimacy is inseparable from its power. It doesn
